In this bonus recording, hear Ufahamu Africa host Kim Dionne read Laura Seay’s review of From Pews to Politics: Religious Sermons and Political Participation in Africa, a book by Rachel Beatty Riedl and Gwyneth McClendon. The review was published in this past Friday’s installment of the African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular (#APSRS20), and this recording is being shared as part of a collaboration with The Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog), a blog on politics and political science at The Washington Post.
Tag: Religion
Ep. 80: A conversation with Emmanuel Katongole on a political theology for Africa
This week’s episode begins with congratulations to Rachel Beatty Riedl and her co-author Gwyneth McClendon on the publication of their book, From Pews to Politics: Religious Sermons and Political Participation in Africa. What perfect timing, given this week’s episode features a conversation with Father Emmanuel Katongole, Professor of Theology and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The news wrap also covers events in Burkina Faso and Gambia, Ugandan opposition parliamentarian Bobi Wine’s visit to the US, and a shoutout to TJ Tallie for his book being published this week, too!
This week’s episode includes the first interview by Ufahamu Africa’s research and production fellow, Zamone Perez, an undergraduate student at Northwestern University. Zamone talks with Professor Katongole about his book, The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa. The conversation covers broad territory on religion as offering social and political organizing principles as well as specifics, e.g., on forgiveness of the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army Joseph Kony. Their conversation begins at 15:17.
Bonus: An author Q&A with Elizabeth Foster on her new book, African Catholic
In this bonus recording, hear Ufahamu Africa host Kim Dionne read a Q&A between TMC editor Laura Seay and Elizabeth Foster, author of African Catholic: Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church. The Q&A was published in this past Friday’s installment of the African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular, and this recording is being shared as part of a collaboration with The Monkey Cage, a blog on politics and political science at The Washington Post.
Ep. 71: A conversation with Erin Pettigrew on Muslim spiritual mediators, locally relevant research, and more
We begin this week’s episode announcing an exciting collaboration with The Monkey Cage to feature bonus content each Monday morning — a weekly reading of a book review from TMC’s African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular. The news we cover this week includes recent events in Sudan, Kehinde Wiley’s artist residency in Dakar, a nuclear project irradiating tsetse flies, and more.
Our featured conversation is with Erin Pettigrew, an assistant professor of History and Arab Crossroads Studies at NYU Abu Dhabi. Her research focuses on 19th and 20th century West Africa and histories of Islam, race, and healing in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Their conversation touches on how people deal with change over time, including practices involving the spiritual realm, which draws on what Erin learned in working on her exciting book project, To Invoke the Invisible: Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change in the Sahara. They also talk about Erin’s next book project on the history of a leftist political movement in Mauritania. Their conversation begins at 11:01.
Ep. 66: A conversation with Abdourahmane Seck on Islam, modernity, and more
We begin this week’s episode talking about Benin politics, a Malawian musician, the deployment of a malaria vaccine, a Russian company’s involvement in Sudan’s response to protesters, and the 25th anniversary of South Africa’s elections ending the Apartheid regime.This week we feature a conversation with Abdourahmane Seck, an anthropologist and historian at the Faculty of Civilizations, Religions, Arts and Communication at the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal. Dr. Seck is the author of several works on Islam and south-south migration. He is currently a visiting scholar in the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa, part of the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. His conversation begins at 15:13.
Ep. 58: A conversation with Wendell Marsh on the history (and modernity) of Islam and the African world
This week’s conversation is with Wendell Marsh (@theafrabian), an Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies at Rutgers University-Newark and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Buffet Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University. He conducts research and teaches on the encounter of Islam and the African world as mediated in Arabic and vernacular texts. His segment begins at 12:21.
Ep. 45: A conversation with Abdulbasit Kassim on religion, Boko Haram, and more
In this week’s episode, we talk about conflict in Cameroon, work by the writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, land restitution in South Africa, and Nanjala Nyabola’s new book. This week’s featured conversation is with Abdulbasit Kassim, who visited Northwestern University’s Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa earlier this week. Kassim is a PhD student in the Department of Religion at Rice University, where his research focuses on the Intellectual History of Islam in Africa, Contemporary Islamic Movements in Africa, Postcolonial African States, African Religions, and the International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa. He is the co-editor of The Boko Haram Reader: From Nigerian Preachers to the Islamic State. The Boko Haram Reader is an unprecedented collection of primary source texts, audio-visuals, and nashids translated into English from Hausa, Arabic, and Kanuri. It traces the history and evolution of the Boko Haram movement. Kassim’s segment begins at 5:53.